People struggle. People suffer. People die of hunger. With out a doubt, we as a world have the technologi­cal resources to squash it out, but we do not have the infrastruc­ture or social structure to allow these technologi­es to flourish, even though they are right there in our reach.

The American government is struggling­, and that's just to do something essential that's a no brainier. It's pathetic. This system is almost worthless. Essentials should be automated. We don't have time for this bullshit.

All I see is ideological grandstanding. No science, no intelligence, no discussions, only rampant stupidity.

As soon as there's a crowd, I'm in; and in hard. However, while the mantra is 'what can I do about it?' I'm keeping my head down.

Nice post, though.

Actually just because you have it well and your friends and family doesn't mean everyone does.

Mark, you could run for president, if it's a no brainer.

Raising the debt ceiling is not a "no brainer." It's a temporary fix that will only cause more out of control spending. The problem is nobody wants to cut any of their pet projects.

The "no brainer" is passing some sort of balanced budget act. Want to start up a new social program or build a bridge to nowhere? Better have the balls to raise taxes. (Want to cut taxes? Better cut some programs.)

It's sacrilegious to make changes to Social Security, despite it being one of the most idiotic schemes ever. The government shouldn't pay for old people's retirement. They should save their own money and live off of investments. Everybody who worked would be better off that way (have much more money). And if you cannot make it on your own, that's what relatives are for. That's worked for, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of years.

And likewise, if we aren't spending billions of dollars a month blowing up some country and putting it back together, we aren't patriotic.

Not sure what you're getting at, but if we continue raising the debt ceiling and spending money, we will eventually be doomed. That is, the interest on our debt will be greater than total revenue. It hasn't "worked fine for decades" because at some point it will totally collapse.

Not raising the debt ceiling may cause a terrible hit to the economy in the short term, but it could just very well solve the long term problems that otherwise won't be going away.

But I fully expect both sides to strike a meaningless deal at the last second that raises the debt ceiling and does nothing else. The Republicans will hope to win the Senate in the next elections and then finally get some balanced budget policies in place.

Social programs for disabled people are a different topic... They are far less costly than something as general purpose as Social Security.

Sure it has. No single debt limit increase had any end-of-the-world effect on anything, ever. I'm sure there is some larger, long term problem out there somewhere, but the debt limit increases (or even the concept of a debt limit) have nothing to do with it.

You wouldn't need to increase the debt limit if the budget passed the by the congress didn't go past the current limit. The budget was passed with the assumption that the debt limit would be raised accordingly (as it has been tens of times before without any issue), and therefore, it must be raised. End of story. If you don't like the debt, craft the budget such that it reduces it. Forbid debt limits and then craft the budget accordingly, not craft the budget assuming debt limit increases and then outlaw debt limit increases. One approach is a logical approach. The other one involves a gun and a foot.

Who said anything about social programs? I just like sandwiches, and they won't let you in if you haven't showered in months (I haven't.)

5 trillion dollar coin?

Yes, you pay into it, so you can collect later. Sure, the money you gave them actually gets invested, and the proceeds of that go to people currently collecting, but you DO get a benefit from paying into it.

If you like to think about it that way, the last generation paid for you. So really, no one is out of pocket, so long as no-one gets gypped.

The debt ceiling was a good idea: A mechanism to prevent unlimited spending by the government, but since the government was generally just irresponsible enough to raise it every time the limit was reached, there was no point as it only wasted time having to get the branches of government agreeing to raise it.

Undoubtedly, both sides are posturing, but for the record, I agree with the Republicans taking a stand. Going trillions further into debt to pay for unfunded expenditures is just plain stupid. The States have to balance their budget (for good reasons), so as far as I'm concerned, any smart and honest person should agree the Fed should be required to do the same. No matter what, the debt should only be allowed to decrease, starting as soon as possible.

Going endlessly into debt to pay for Social programs is misguided Socialism. The ends don't always justify the means, regardless of what politicians on either side of the scale may say. I say make everybody pay a flat Federal tax rate (percentage), no loop holes, no exploiting people based on their pay grade. NO FEDERAL HANDOUTS FOR NON CITIZENS. We have enough of our own people to take care of without having to give freebies to illegal aliens. If the path to citizenship can be made easier, I'm all for it as long as it requires new citizens to carry their own weight and not be a burden on the rest of the country. I have read that gaining Mexican citizenship requires that, so if Mexico objects to that, they are hypocrites. Some people are genuinely too disabled for most kinds of work, but there are too many leeches in the system sucking the tax revenue dry, make them become productive and responsible members of society. I know some people who collect Welfare or Disability through their own laziness and irresponsibility, and it really annoys me because there are better ways for the government to allocate tax money.

Has Canada gotten the hockey riots under control yet?